Author
Topic: What are the technical roadblocks to using only one network card? (Read 2332 times)

One of the common first questions people ask on the forums is "why can't I use just one network card". I understand that today using just one network card will break DHCP based plug-and-play and network booting the media directors, but is there a reason we cannot solve these issues?

To make DHCP plug-and-play work without being a DHCP server, the Dhcpd-Plugin could be extended to perform arp requests for each IP on the subnet. Any new MAC/IP addresses that appears can then be sent to the Plug and Play plugin. This can be further extended by listening on the DHCPD port for DHCPDISCOVER requests. When one is seen from a previously unknown MAC address, then the scan can start again to try to discover what IP address was assigned to it.

To make the media directors boot from the network, couldn't a ProxyDHCP server be used?

Besides QoS, and possibly hard coded 192.168.80.1 issues, are there any other features that would break with only having one NIC?

Disclaimer: I'm not trying to personally setup anything other than the standard two NIC setup, I personally like to have a separate segment for media and home automation devices. I'm merely wondering if it would be technically possible to make some small-ish changes that would make things easier for new people who would like to experiment with LinuxMCE. I'm also not advocating making these changes right away, just trying to learn the downsides of using only one NIC.

I did some work on this a while ago to see what would happen. What I found - there are way too many reasons to have a separate media network for me to justify spending any more time on it. For those looking to make a setup without changing existing, my suggestion is to have 2 NICs and leave one disconnected.

Thanks for your replies guys. Sounds like it is something that is do-able, but not likely to fit in very well with other features. I'll put this one on the back burner for now. There are plenty of other tickets that I can contribute to.

jimbodude, thanks for the list of issues Standalone Mode would cause. Kind of puts the effort into perspective.